Immigration Blog

Newly analyzed data shows a remarkable concentration of immigrant investor (EB-5) funds in New York City, and particularly in Manhattan (by far the richest of the five boroughs).

In this academic data set — created by two university professors, not by CIS — we find 68 percent of the EB-5 funds noted therein went into New York City, which has 2.7 percent of the nation's population. Read more...

Rodrigo Duterte, the irascible leader of the Philippines, has slammed Western nations for their "hypocrisy" when it comes to migrants and said the Philippines will happily take them until it is "filled to the brim." It's an interesting comment, given the generosity of the West by any objective measure, especially compared with the Philippines, which is very much a sending, as opposed to a receiving, nation — but hey, let's not let the facts get in the way of his magnanimity. Read more...

In a recent blog, I commented on the number of good, substantive immigration reform bills that got log-jammed in Congress the past several years without going anywhere. And expressed the hope that this would change, come the swearing-in of the new president.

These bills never got to this president's desk. And even if they had, I'm pretty sure they would have been vetoed because when I say "good, substantive" reform bills, I'm not talking about amnesty or other such things, I'm talking about bills that would restore integrity to our immigration system by obliging enforcement and compliance with the law, and that would also address many of the weak points that have been revealed in existing statute and practice over the past eight years. Read more...

Yet another EB-5 scandal has been exposed, this time in Florida's Palm Beach, with the promoter using his photos with Donald Trump and (separately) with Bill and Hillary Clinton in his efforts to gull both Chinese and Iranian aliens into wasteful investments.

Misusing millions of dollars provided by rich Chinese, yearning for U.S. visas, is par for the course, but this instance relates to both Iranian and Chinese investors, and it involves an assertive promoter claiming totally phony links to both the former and the future president, making it a double two-fer on the EB-5 scam scale. Read more...

Donald Trump's ascension to the presidency means that he will have a chance to implement the "extreme vetting" of immigrants he proposed during the campaign. In a speech at Youngstown, Ohio, back in August, Trump suggested that immigrants would be evaluated not only for their possible connections to terrorism, but also for their commitment to First World values.

The new policy would be timely. As I noted a couple of months ago, no one will be surprised that social views in traditional societies differ from those in the post-industrial West, but the degree of divergence can be striking. Immigration is surging from countries where that divergence is especially large. Read more...

Throughout the 2016 election, most of the American media exhibited TDS – Trump Derangement Syndrome. After the election was over, the media discovered what most Americans knew already: that they existed in a bubble isolating them from reality.

Immigration is one of the great divides between the media ordinary Americans. For example, if I put forth the proposition “The government should encourage employers to replace Americans with foreign workers," 90 percent or more of Americans would disagree. Read more...

One of the most carefully guarded prerogatives of every incoming presidential administration is the selection of executive branch leaders, from Cabinet-level positions through agency heads and even further below in the hierarchical rungs of the bureaucracy. These are all senior executive positions, and there are over 4,000 of them. Read more...

Merrick Garland's nomination to the Supreme Court by President Obama is now obviously doomed by Donald Trump's White House win, and the Republican majorities in both chambers of Congress.

I imagine that right about now, Garland probably feels a little like the character Terry Malloy, memorably played by Marlon Brando in "On the Waterfront": "I coulda had some class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody." If only Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had let Garland's nomination move forward through the advice-and-consent process. But he didn't. Read more...

I am writing in response to the epic failure of your coverage of the presidential election. I should make it clear at the outset that I am no Trump apologist. I voted, reluctantly, for Hillary Clinton. I write as a former immigration reporter whose respect for the Times has long been diminished by the ideological bias that pervades much of your immigration coverage and commentary. Read more...

Two senior Democratic politicians, both lawyers, both women, both with Santa Clara (Calif.) University degrees, and both routinely supportive of foreign worker programs, are currently at odds over the layoffs of 80 U.S. resident IT workers so that they can be replaced by less expensive H-1B workers, presumably from Asia. Read more...

The Center for Immigration Studies is an independent, non-partisan, non-profit research organization founded in 1985.
It is the nation's only think tank devoted exclusively to research and policy analysis of the economic, social, demographic,
fiscal, and other impacts of immigration on the United States.